Physics Topics

kbd512 · 2020-08-21 12:42:34

tahanson43206,

A more succinct statement would be that we currently have very primitive means for converting high energy photons and particles into electricity. There are various reasons why fission reactors are impractical for specific applications like powering semi trucks, but within their limitations nothing else comes close in terms of total power output per unit mass and volume of power generation equipment (total number of Watt-hours generated per kilo of power generation equipment mass required or square meter of "floor space" required).

The advantage of thermal power conversion is that most direct electrical conversion methods are not very efficient, but that's slowly changing thanks to revolutionary new materials like CNT, Graphene, Perovskites, etc. Some of these materials also have direct application to solar cells, because they're basically solar cells that convert high energy photons (X-Ray / Gamma) into electricity. With co-generation, meaning the combined use of both direct (using Alpha or Beta particles and high energy photons) and thermal (photons with thermal energy spectra) power conversion, you can extract significantly more power per unit mass and volume. As always, "the squeeze" is the increased engineering complexity, possibly to the point that "the juice" isn't worth "the squeeze".

Direct Conversion of Nuclear Radiation Energy by George H. Miley

That's a 500+ page book, but you can skim through the basic concepts section. I'm not sure why so few people are aware of this, though, given the number of experiments conducted over the years. There's probably less press for this than the next new battery that will "save the world", in just 5 to 10 years. A rotating magnetic field is, similarly, an "intermediate step" to producing electrical power.

Whether heat generated through fission is considered primitive or not, fissile materials contain orders of magnitude more energy than chemical reactions if mass and volume are accounted for. In case the point isn't clear, I'm talking about total power output over the life of the power generation equipment, per unit mass and volume of all required parts of power generation solution, not necessarily power output per unit mass of equipment to produce a given power output level for a brief period of time. For example, a chemical rocket engine is still king in the power-to-weight and volume department, but only if you ignore the mass of propellants expended to generate that power. A thin film solar panel at 1AU is the absolute king of the power-to-weight department, but only if you ignore the incredible surface area required to generate that power.

Use case means everything. If I have plenty of surface area to work with, manageable dust, a short run to the electrical equipment that requires power, and I only need intermittent power, such as stationary surface power generation for splitting water, then I'm inclined to go with thin film solar. If I need continuous power, especially if I also need continuous high output, and I only have a parcel of land the size of a house plot to work with, then I'm going to go with a gas turbine if I have the fuel to supply or a fission reactor if I don't.

If you need to produce a mere 10MW, but you need to do that for years or decades, and you can only have an unit volume the size of an industrial trash can, then it rapidly becomes clear which solution requires the least tonnage of equipment and the least amount of volume per total number of Watt-hours of electricity or thermal power produced.

A PT-6A turboprop can easily produce 1MW of power with equivalent weight to an all-Aluminum Big Block Chevy / BBC, but between the two the gas turbine will also require more fuel to produce 1MW. However, it will also have a much longer service life at that power output level than a BBC of equivalent weight. There's a reason why engineers keep experimenting with diesels for light aircraft engines. They want equivalent power for moderately increased engine weight and significantly reduced fuel consumption. They're trading some increased engine mass for reduced fuel mass. Ultimately, fuel is a very healthy chunk of the total useful load of any aircraft beyond an ultralight, so there's a real incentive to produce a more efficient engine. Similarly, a few companies are now experimenting with PEM fuel cells to drastically reduce fuel mass and engine mass (the fuel cell and electric motor are also significantly lighter than a gas or diesel of equivalent power output, with the penalty of increased fuel storage container mass. If the fuel container mass can be incorporated into a very strong airframe design, then designers would consider that a double-win, especially if it makes a crash more survivable.

Getting back on-topic, though, both fission and fusion can produce direct electrical power, whether used that way or not. The utility of doing that is entirely related to the desired application. The first fission and fusion reactors attempted to use thermal power conversion because we already know how to do that acceptably well.

tahanson43206 · 2020-08-21 17:23:55

For kbd512 re #51

Todo item: Direct energy from fission

http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 56#p171356

We're in Physics right now, but Physics applies to many topics in the NewMars forum.

Production of thermal energy to heat a space going vessel is a useful deliverable from a fission reactor.

Ways to achieve electron flows by capturing a portion of heat energy as it flows toward empty space are well known, and I expect they will surely be included in large vessel design.

However, direct production of electron flows seems to me to be a capability well worth investigating.

Edit#1: In other posts in the forum, research into capture of heat photons for delivery of higher energy photons is noted.

So far as I know, nothing along these lines has moved out of the bench top laboratory experiment phase.

(th)

Last edited by tahanson43206 (2020-08-21 17:26:06)

kbd512 · 2020-08-21 19:23:47

tahanson43206,

The two major problems with "X-Ray / Gamma solar panels" are that the conversion isn't very efficient and suitable semi-conductors tend to degrade at unacceptable rates when exposed to neutron radiation. You get Helium protons (Alpha) / electrons (Beta) / neutrons (charge-less subatomic particles) / X-Ray photons / Gamma Ray photons from fission. However, we now have "previously thought impossible" Gamma Ray telescopes in space that collect very high energy photons from distant stars to help us build a picture of the world around us, so technology is constantly advancing.

The biggest issue with the conversion of X-Ray and Gamma Ray emissions from fission reactions into directional electron movement is how to synthesize a sufficiently durable semi-conductor with a band-gap suitable for the incredibly tiny wavelengths of X-Rays and Gamma Rays. In controlled fission reactions, the particles and photons are flung in all directions at all times. Fission is more like a hand grenade than a laser beam in that respect, meaning the pieces (particles and photons) go flying in all directions in a pseudo-random way. It's not totally random, but not really "directed" like the current flowing through an electric generator, either. Furthermore, the "neutron reflector" flings the neutron particles in all directions, though enough of them are reflected back towards the fissile material in the core to sustain fission. You can have current flowing through a conductor with no voltage generated. That's essentially what you'd get if you stuck a Copper rod in an operating fission reactor.

The traveling wave reactor, a design under study / test by NASA due to the potential for a very high power-to-weight ratio, does direct energy conversion from fission fragments:

Traveling Wave Direct Energy Conversion of Fission Fragments

I've mentioned this device in other posts, though it was some time ago. I think this is closest to what you're thinking of that's a practical device that's actually been tested and produced direct electrical power output from fission.

tahanson43206 · 2020-08-21 20:29:41

For kbd512 re #53

Thank you for the continued development of your reply concerning direct energy collection from nuclear fission.

And thank you for repeating the link to Mr. Wang's article about the traveling wave idea.

I just read the article once, and need to go back to try to absorb more, and perhaps follow up any links or hints there may be.

However, what I came away with from a first reading is that this ** sounds ** like a way to get more usable energy out of a system already engaged in producing thrust.

Edit#1: FluxBB came up with one other citation for the link to Mr. Wang's article:
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 29#p142929

That was back in 2017, before I signed up for membership, so (again) I appreciate your posting it here.

(th)

Last edited by tahanson43206 (2020-08-21 20:33:29)

tahanson43206 · 2020-10-04 08:02:37

In another topic, Mary Soon Lee's biographical summary listed a book of poetry she had written about the elements of the Periodic Table.

I wouldn't have noticed this if the number of haiku's she had written was 118, which is the number of elements on my most recently published Chart of the Periodic Table. However, there are 119 Haiku in the book.

This led me to investigate, and I discovered that the end of the periodic table had been predicted at 137 elements, based upon the idea that electrons at the first shell in such an element would have to be traveling at the speed of light. Now (I gather) the "new" predicted limit is 173 elements.

A helpful (for me at least) summary of the situation is reported in the article at the link below:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science- … 180957851/

The article includes a discussion of the effect of the electrons in the innermost shell of Gold traveling at half the speed of light. According to the article, the electrons traveling at that speed contribute to the behavior of Gold, which absorbs blue light.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2020-10-04 08:47:38

The blue wavelength is 380 nm to 500 nm with the eye able to see 400 to 525. It is the shortest of the colors in light.

I think there is other elements above the end but much higher levels of gravity are required.

tahanson43206 · 2020-10-15 09:32:49

The article at the link below describes research by a mathematician studying rational numbers. The "new" aspect of this particular study is an attempt to find a (possible) correlation between physics and this subset of mathematical theory.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/secr … ket-newtab

“It’s almost impossible to be interested in geometry and topology nowadays without knowing something about [physics]. I’m reasonably sure this will happen with number theory” in the next 15 years, Kim said. “The connections are so natural.”
Kevin Hartnett is a senior writer at Quanta Magazine covering mathematics and computer science.

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tahanson43206 · 2020-10-19 18:02:30

The article at the link below describes an experiment to measure the time it takes for a photon to cross a hydrogen molecule, by measuring the motions of the electrons which are bumped out of their orbits by the photon.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-j … 26659.html

I know someone who was involved in early measurement in femtoseconds. That looks like horse-and-buggy time in comparison to this latest work.

From start to finish, it took 247 zeptoseconds for the photon to cross the hydrogen molecule, though there is some variation depending on how far apart the atoms in the hydrogen molecule are when they’re hit by the photon, according to Grundmann.
“We observed for the first time that the electron shell in a molecule does not react to light everywhere at the same time,” Reinhard Dörner, a professor of atomic physics at Goethe, said in a statement. “The time delay occurs because information within the molecule only spreads at the speed of light.”

Previous work ...

Compression of femtosecond optical pulses
Appl. Phys. Lett. 40, 761 (1982); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.93276
C. V. Shank, R. L. Fork, R. Yen, and R. H. Stolen
Bell Telephone Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey 07733
W. J. Tomlinson
Bell Telephone Laboratories, Allentown, Pennsylvania 18103
more...
ABSTRACT
We describe the generation and measurement of optical pulses as short as 30 fs. The pulses are produced using self‐phase modulation in a short 15‐cm optical fiber followed by a grating compressor.
REFERENCES

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tahanson43206 · 2020-10-24 14:07:04

The article at the link below reports on a (smallish) advance in the ongoing attempt to find room-temperature superconductors.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/physicists-m … 00488.html

The premise is interesting .... diamond is given as an example of a substance that is created under conditions of high pressure, but which retains its properties after the original pressure is removed. Superconductivity is reported at temperature above freezing, but (at this point) only if pressure is high.

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tahanson43206 · 2020-10-26 18:11:20

The article at the link below reports on successful computer simulation of a problem behavior in Tokamaks. Instability occurs in the magnetic containment field, and plasma escapes the compressed region, and it may even damage the container itself.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/brea … 00667.html

This Breakthrough Could Fix the Fatal Flaw in Fusion Reactors
Caroline Delbert
Mon, October 26, 2020, 3:39 PM EDT

Advances in supercomputers allow scientists and engineers to address the problem of modelling individual atoms/ions in the numbers needed to approach the real world inside a Tokamak.

(th)

kbd512 · 2020-10-27 01:47:54

tahanson43206,

It'll be interesting to see whether or not advanced computational models and sensors can help pulse electromagnets to smooth turbulent flow the moment it starts. This could also be useful for other key space exploration technologies, such as active shielding scheme that electromagnetically pulses current through a particle bubble / shield to deflect incoming GCRs or SPEs.

tahanson43206 · 2020-10-27 06:43:34

For kbd512 re #61

Thank you for noting the advances in computer simulation of plasma. Your vision of how such techniques might be adapted for other applications was surprising (to me at least) and intriguing.

Application to mitigation of space radiation is right out of Star Trek. Something like that may be the "shields" that were brought up to protect against incoming fire, although the writers who imagined such protection would have had no idea how it might be achieved.

An application that should (hopefully) receive focus is protection against solar flares. Protection against GCR would require deployment in a sphere around the vehicle, which could happen when resources can be allocated.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2020-10-27 18:00:43

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/w … 0increases.

Plasma can be artificially generated by heating a neutral gas or subjecting it to a strong electromagnetic field to the point where an ionized gaseous substance becomes increasingly electrically conductive. The resulting charged ions and electrons become influenced by long-range electromagnetic fields, making the plasma dynamics more sensitive to these fields than a neutral gas.

Its that heat level and pressure that destroys along with the static charge plus particals.

tahanson43206 · 2020-11-01 18:45:35

This is for Calliban ...

Void seems to prefer that folks not post into his topics ...

I'm intrigued by your prediction in this post:

Calliban wrote:

One idea that does intrigue me is the possibility of transporting water at low pressure as brine, flowing through a long plastic pipe, buried in the regolith. A small diameter plastic pipe, maybe a foot in diameter, between a harvesting facility at the poles and a base or colony closer to the equator. Friction in the pipe would reduce flow rate to a trickle. Maybe it wouldn't matter if that trickle was maintained 24/7, some 365 days a year.

There may be resources readily available to help a reader to understand the forces at work inside pipes. I would have thought that pressure would overcome resistance to fluid flow inside a pipe, but perhaps the bursting strength of the pipe is a limit.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2020-11-01 19:10:23

Being under ground the pipe would not see the searing heat of day and the nights cold but at what depth must we dig to isolate and insulate the pipeline for the effects.

Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica are said to have a temperatures ranging from −0.8 to 2 °C (35 °F), salinities from 34.6 to 34.7 psu.

https://edptoolbox.org/documents/Pipeli … -Cover.pdf

https://www.hunker.com/12460059/require … ater-meter

pipe size for water flow rate
https://www.constructionknowledge.net/p … design.pdf

tahanson43206 · 2020-11-01 20:28:04

For SpaceNut re #65

You are on a roll today, with the (to me amazing) links you've provided in several topics!

The water flow rate calculations (with multiple charts) was really something (for me at least) to see!

Regarding Calliban's original concept ... it occurred to me to ask Google how the engineers who designed the Alaska pipeline (I'm not sure which one the quote below is for) planned to deal with the issues Calliban raised ...

Alyeska Pipeline - TAPS - Pipeline Operations - Pump Stations
www.alyeska-pipe.com/TAPS/PipelineOperations/PumpStations
The Trans Alaska Pipeline System was originally designed to operate with 12 pump stations. Only 11 were built due to overall pumping efficiency. With today’s throughput and pump station upgrades through the Electrification & Automation project, only four pump stations are in use today. Pump Stations 1, 3, 4 and 9 currently pump oil through TAPS. Pump Stations 3, 4 and 9 have been retrofitted with new E&A pumps …

I am amazed to see how much technology has improved from the time the original design was finalized, to today's four pumps able to perform the entire job.

In the context of a Mars pipeline, I would expect there would be planning for similar in pipeline pumps to maintain pressure against the inevitable losses. I'm pretty sure that oil is heated for transfer through the Alaska pipeline, but would have to go back to be sure. However, in the case of the Mars brine pipeline, I would think that heating (using solar panels for input) would make sense, to ease the burden on the pumps.

I noticed that the charts SpaceNut found reached all the way up to the 12 inch diameter that Calliban had mentioned.

Brine may well have different characteristics that plain water.

The article with the charts mentioned smoothness of the pipe as a factor determining losses.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2020-12-09 12:22:09

Every so often someone comes along with a theory that ** might ** supplement Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

To the best of my knowledge, none of the attempts have been successful.

Here is the latest attempt that has come to my attention:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/fragments-en … 16318.html

For the precession-of-Mercury problem, we modeled the Sun as an enormous stationary fragment of energy and Mercury as a smaller but still enormous slow-moving fragment of energy. For the bending-of-light problem, the Sun was modeled the same way, but the photon was modeled as a minuscule fragment of energy moving at the speed of light. In both problems, we calculated the trajectories of the moving fragments and got the same answers as those predicted by the theory of general relativity. We were stunned.

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tahanson43206 · 2020-12-17 07:41:04

The article at the link below is about a venture to try to harness the Hall Effect for space propulsion.

The business activity may well fit into other topics, but the business plan can only succeed if the underlying physics works on a large scale.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/magd … 52875.html

Mike Butcher
Thu, December 17, 2020 7:28 AM ET
A startup with a new type of spacecraft propulsion system could make the interplanetary travel seen in Star Trek a reality. Magdrive has just closed a £1.4M seed round led by Founders Fund, an early investor in SpaceX, backed by Luminous Ventures, 7percent Ventures, and Entrepreneur First.

Magdrive is developing a next generation of spacecraft propulsion for small satellites. The startup says its engine’s thrust and efficiency are a "generational leap" ahead of any other electrical thrusters, opening up the space industry to completely new types of missions that were not possible before, without resorting to much larger, expensive and heavier chemical thrusters. It says its engine would make fast and affordable interplanetary space travel possible, as well as operations in Very Low Earth orbit. The engine would also make orbital manufacturing far more possible than previously.

Existing electrical solutions are very efficient but have very low thrust. Chemical thrusters have high thrust but lack efficiency and are hazardous and expensive to handle. Magdrive says its engine can deliver both high thrust and high efficiency in one system.
<snip>
Co-founder (and Star Trek fan) Dr Thomas Clayson did a PhD in plasma physics, working on advanced electromagnetic fields. He realized this could be a cornerstone for developing a plasma thruster that could achieve the accelerations required for interplanetary space travel. After meeting Mark Stokes, a mechanical engineer at Imperial College London with similar dreams of space travel, they decided to build a small scale thruster for satellites.

But Magdrive is not alone. Other companies are developing so-called 'Hall Effect Thrusters', which is a technology that has existed since the 1960’s. Much of the development is towards miniaturization and mass reduction, but thrust and efficiency remain the same. These companies include Busek, Exotrail, Apollo Fusion, Enpusion, Nanoavionics. Meanwhile, large international companies with huge technology portfolios are working on improving chemical propulsion and making it non-toxic to handle, such as Aerojet Rocketdyne and Moog ISP.

They plan to scale up our technology to power larger manned spacecraft (once in orbit) to long-distance destinations such as the Moon and Mars. Our system would present a much more affordable than a chemical or nuclear solution, due to the huge reduction in fuel costs, and because it is reusable.

Andrew J Scott, Founding Partner, 7percent Ventures: “At 7percent we seek founding teams with 'moonshot' ambitions. With Magdrive this is not just a metaphor: their revolutionary plasma thruster will soon be powering satellites, but in the future could take us to deep space. While the UK's expertise in constructing satellites is world-renowned, there has been far less focus on propulsion. In fact, Great Britain is the only country to have successfully developed and then, in the 1970's abandoned, an indigenous satellite launch capability, which undoubtedly curbed the UK's space sector. So we're excited to be backing Magdrive, one of a new generation of British space startups, which has the vision and ambition to become a world-beating company in this burgeoning sector.”

From Wikipedia:

The Hall effect is the production of a voltage difference (the Hall voltage) across an electrical conductor, transverse to an electric current in the conductor and to an applied magnetic field perpendicular to the current. It was discovered by Edwin Hall in 1879.
Hall effect - Wikipedia

From #Melexis

The Hall-effect principle is named for physicist Edwin Hall. In 1879 he discovered that when a conductor or semiconductor with current flowing in one direction was introduced perpendicular to a magnetic field a voltage could be measured at right angles to the current path.
Hall-effect Principle #Melexiswww.melexis.com › articles › hall-effect

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tahanson43206 · 2020-12-19 08:29:12

This post is about ElectroStatic radiation protection.

It arises from a topic created by Quaoar, who was asking about the effectiveness of a radiation shelter built inside a kerosene fuel tank on a starship.

ES needs a very high positive voltage to stop protons and strong magnetic fields to deflect electrons accelerated by the positive electrostatic fields: the hardware mass is more than a storm cellar surrounded by 20 g/cm2 of kerosene, which is also needed as landing propellant.

SearchTerm:ES ElectroStatic radiation protection
SearchTerm:Electrostatic radiation protection

Reference#1:http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=175027#p175027

I would like to see this subtopic develop into a fully defined solution for use in a space going vehicle or habitat.

The theme itself goes back to the 1970's (citation needed)

The variation that caught my eye in Quaoar's post is the use of a magnetic field to deal with the electrons that will be attracted to the positively charged grid that is designed to repel free flying positively charged particles, such as iron atoms without electrons traveling at close to the speed of light.

The strength of the electrostatic field capable of deflecting such ions is known (citation needed)

What this post seeks to encourage is discovery (if the information is known) of the nature and strength of the magnetic field that would handle electrons in this situation. Those electrons will have been traveling rapidly in the first place, and they will have been given additional momentum by the positive electrostatic field designed to deflect positive ions.

The desired outcome of the investigation is a system capable of reducing inflow of charged particles into a habitat for living creatures in open space.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2020-12-19 08:41:37

This post is intended to (try to) stimulate thinking about aneutronic fusion. This kind of fusion is most frequently associated with Boron 11 and a Proton.

The ultimate output of a successful fusion sequence is a set of Alpha particles and some energy (citation needed)

SearchTerm:aneutronic fusion
SearchTerm:B11P fusion
SearchTerm:Boron11 Proton fusion

There is at least one research team working on plasma fusion of Boron 11 and Protons (citation needed)

There is at least one research team looking at (to me more interesting) idea of fixing Boron 11 in place and bombarding it with Protons (citation needed)

In the absence of knowledge of what the fixed Boron investigation is doing, here is a speculation:

Experimental Apparatus to Evaluate Effectiveness of Bombardment of Fixed Position Boron 11 with Protons

1) Evacuated Chamber (or free space location)
2) Boron 11 packed as densely as possible as a fixed target (citation needed for crystaline Boron 11)
3) A small cyclotron can provide a supply of protons traveling at the precise velocity needed (multiple citations needed)
4) A means of measuring temperature at various locations inside the chamber
5) A means of confirming production of Helium (probably optical spectrometry)
6) A means of measuring current flow ... Alpha particles are generated, and they will seek electrons from their surroundings

Procedure:
1) Prepare Boron 11 (Boron 11 is available commercially as a waste product from production of more valuable Boron 10) (citation needed)
2) Evacuate test chamber
3) Prepare hydrogen for delivery to ionization process
4) Prepare cyclotron for operation
5) Prepare all sensors and data recording equipment
6) Initiate test run ... continue until supplies or data storage capability are exhausted
7) Evaluate data

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SpaceNut · 2020-12-19 14:56:51

Well memories of the work from the past topics that KBD512 has indicated for ships shielding as its light weight in mass to bring.
I remembered seeing a post on this materials use Boron Nitride Ceramic - Space Radiation Shielding

https://www.preciseceramic.com/products … itride-bn/

Its not the first time that we have heard of the BNNT's use for radiational shielding....as its "hydrogenated boron nitride nanotubes"

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/re … on-on-mars
http://waset.org/publications/9997248/s … plications
http://www.bnnt.com/products
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/space … lding.html

tahanson43206 · 2021-01-06 13:34:10

Here is a report on the ongoing dispute over the existence (or not) of Dark Matter ...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/maybe-dark-m … 00150.html

This is an update .... recently completed observations appear to support an alternative theory, but the jury is most definitely still out.

In light of Einstein's revision of Newtonian gravitational theory, it seems only fitting (to me at least) that Einstein's theory itself might need slight refinement at some point, at the outermost extremes of precision, where this gent appears to be operating.

There would presumably be a Nobel prize in the queue for the originator of the alternative revision of gravitational theory, if it can be proven, or rather, not falsified.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2021-03-23 07:02:34

https://www.yahoo.com/news/lhc-machine- … 41893.html

According to the Standard Model, beauty quarks should decay into equal numbers of electron and muon particles. Instead, the process yields more electrons than muons.
One possible explanation is that an as-yet undiscovered particle known as a leptoquark was involved in the decay process and made it easier to produce electrons.

The results are just enough to be interesting (I gather) but far below 5 Sigma needed for acceptance as valid.

The measurement from LHCb is three-sigma - meaning there is roughly a one in 1,000 chance that the measurement is a statistical coincidence. So people should not get carried away by these findings, according to team leader Prof Chris Parkes, from the University of Manchester.

Glad to see more results (even if inconclusive) coming out of this massive investment.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2021-03-25 17:42:52

For SpaceNut ... this item is about Beamed Power .... we don't have a topic that includes those words, but if we did, this item might go there ...

https://currently.att.yahoo.com/finance … 29109.html

Gustafson hopes PowerLight’s success will clear the way for an even more ambitious project, aimed at developing a system good enough for military field operations. The goal is to transmit at least 1,000 watts of power over a distance of a kilometer (0.6 mile) or more. If PowerLight gets the Pentagon’s go-ahead, the project could bring in more than $10 million over the course of the next few years, Gustafson said.
“That is a really big step up for the company,” he said.
PowerLight, which was previously known as LaserMotive, has taken a lot of big steps over the course of a decade. In 2009, the company won $900,000 in a NASA-sponsored contest to power up cable-climbing robots. Most of the work it’s been taking on since then has been for the military.

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tahanson43206 · 2021-05-12 11:37:22

This post is inspired by Oldfart1939, whose discussion with RobertDyck about the feasibility of a no-legs landing method for SpaceX Super Heavy first stages led to the impact of winds near the landing site.

Concern for the impact of winds at or near the landing site inspired a discussion of the ability of modern electronic control systems to compensate for gusts of wind that might arrive without warning as a vehicle is nearing the intended perch.

** That ** discussion inspired me to imagine a traditional constructed wind breaker that might be deployed up wind of the landing site, to control the velocity of wind that might otherwise cause disturbance of the trajectory of the descending vehicle.

And ** that ** line of thinking leads me to open a subtopic in the Physics topic.

This is offered in recognition of the contributions of JoshNH4H, who was still active when I joined.

***
Why is a wind break made of solid material?

Why is a wind generator blade of solid material?

Solid materials have been employed by humans to harness or to block the wind for thousands of years.

Solid materials have a proven track record of successfully harnessing the movement of collections of molecules of gas.

Why not stay with tradition? It works! It has always worked! It will continue to work, as far into the future as (I for sure) can see.

The answer arises from a concern expressed by Oldfart1939, that mechanical systems necessarily have a lag time that may not be adequately responsive to the conditions imposed by Nature.

So! The question for this new post is: Is it possible to make a wind screen that does not have mechanical moving parts ** and ** which allows air to pass through like through a screen, at reduced velocity?

Air can be ionized, and ions can be manipulated by electric forces.

Energy would have to be invested to ionize air passing through a grid ...

The air has momentum due to the velocity of the wind ...

Can the energy of momentum of molecules be harvested if those molecules are ionized?

There are always losses in any system.

Is there a potential for a wash of energy flows?

** If ** there is a way to harvest energy from moving ions, ** then ** that derived energy must be sufficient to match the initial investment plus any losses.

SearchTerm:Electronic wind screen
SearchTerm:Electronic wind generator
SearchTerm:Wind energy absorber using electronic means

The publication date of this concept, in an open forum, is 2021/05/12 (th)

(th)

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Re: Physics Topics

#70 2020-12-19 08:41:37

Re: Physics Topics

#71 2020-12-19 14:56:51

Re: Physics Topics

#72 2021-01-06 13:34:10

Re: Physics Topics

#73 2021-03-23 07:02:34

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#74 2021-03-25 17:42:52

Re: Physics Topics

#75 2021-05-12 11:37:22

Re: Physics Topics

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